History UsefulNotes / MedievalFoodInEurope

What few spices that could be grown in Europe were also popular. Most common were spices from the seeds of plants in the carrot family, widely grown in Europe. Caraway (which grows well as far north as Sweden and Finland) was used for breads and sweets, while the seeds of herbs and vegetables like fennel, lovage, coriander, and celery were commonly used in sausages and pickling brines.[[note]]Caraway made an occasional appearance in these as well, but use of caraway for savory foods mostly disappeared after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. (Ancient Roman cuisine liked to use caraway in certain savory dishes, especially with chicken, and especially in combination with sylphium or asafoetida/hing. However, medieval cookery generally keeps caraway for sweets.)[[/note]] Cumin and anise also found use in the parts of Southern Europe where they could grow; cumin was particularly popular in Iberia, probably due to Arab influence. (The Arab kitchen has long favored cumin as a flavoring for pretty much anything savory. And now you know where the cuisines of Latin America get their famous affinity for cumin.) Coriander was also used to flavor alcoholic beverages, both in the form of beer (the Belgian tradition of including coriander in wheat beer probably dates from the late Middle Ages) and distilled spirits (gin, which usually includes coriander as a supporting note for the dominant juniper, also dates from the late Medieval period)\\

Another exception was grape wine, at least in the grape-growing regions of Europe. France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and the Balkans were (then as now) major grape producers, so wine was a staple of the diet--a legacy of the ancient Roman position that wine was so fundamental, no one, not even a slave, should be made to do without it.[[note]]Seriously, the Romans considered it slave abuse to deny your slave wine except as punishment. Whether this led to anything more than tut-tutting from Roman guardians of morality is unclear, but this was the social opinion.[[/note]] Wine was also common in parts of Central Europe (e.g. the Rhineland, Hungary, and Lower Austria--all major wine regions to this day) that had a good climate for grapes. During the Medieval Warm Period (roughly from the 10th through 13th century), there was even winemaking in the South of England; there is even some suggestion (though no clear evidence) of limited viticulture (mostly for sacramental purposes) in 10th- through 12th-century Sweden. However, the Little Ice Age that started in the late 13th/early 14th century put an end to (to quote [[Series/{{Connections}} James Burke]]) the "fruity little chateau-bottled numbers from England" (let alone Sweden), and in these countries wine became an imported luxury reserved for the wealthy, as it had long been in other countries with bad climates for vines. In more northerly parts, even the sacramental wine of the Eucharist was usually reserved to a single sip for the priest, in large part because it was so scarce; the rest of the congregation just got the bread. (Whether the laity should be allowed to have the wine at Mass therefore became an issue in UsefulNotes/TheProtestantReformation, but that's outside our scope.)\\

Areas that raised a lot of cows also often used butter for cooking. This was usually a cultured butter, as unless you owned a truly massive number of cows, it took several days' worth of cream to make a worthwhile amount of butter; the previous days' cream would ferment slightly while waiting to be churned. This tradition also led to the use of various kinds of sour cream (which is what you normally get if you just let raw fresh cream stand at room temperature overnight) and buttermilk in cooking.\\

Hens might get a reprieve from the cookpot as long as they laid eggs. In practice, this meant chicken was a good bit rarer than pork in the Medieval diet, although less so than beef ([[UsefulNotes/LEtatCestMoi Henry IV of France]]'s[[note]]Yes, ''[[TheMagnificent le bon roi Henri]]'' reigned in the Early Modern period, but the economics of his era didn't differ much from late Medieval times[[/note]] promise that every peasant would have "a chicken in his pot every Sunday" would have been considered an improvement for most people, but not a wildly unrealistic one). As with milk cows, this generally meant chickens were old and tough by the time they found their way onto the table, so chicken was likewise stewed. As for male chickens, ones not needed as roosters for breeding were often castrated to turn them into capons, and sold to the wealthy; capons are fattier and typically slaughtered young, and so would be roasted or perhaps fried--though the English seem to have been fond of boiling them, too, making for a rich soup.\\

Available root crops included carrots, parsnips, turnips, and beetroot/beets. These crops--particularly parsnip--often occupy the role that potato would in today's European cuisine, being boiled, mashed, put in stews, and so on. Some of them would have looked rather different from what you see in today's markets; carrots in particular were available in many colors, particularly shades of red and yellow, though orange ones were probably around as well. (Claims that orange carrots were first bred by patriotic 17th-century Dutch farmers during UsefulNotes/TheEightyYearsWar lack evidence.) Many root crops and brassicas [[note]] A family of leafy plants including broccoli, cauliflower, and cabbage.[[/note]] that are not eaten or even recognized as edible in the present day were widely consumed by Medieval Europeans. Cabbages, lettuce, and purslane were also grown and eaten. Aubergines (eggplants), a relatively recent import from India via the Muslim world (first arriving through Spain), were eaten in the south of Europe at this time, but were known to be extremely bitter; many Italian eggplant recipes still soak the vegetable for a long time to remove bitterness that has long been bred out.\\

The following page is intended as a brief summary of the kinds of food that would have been available in Europe during Medieval times/the Middle Ages. This period is usually defined as the time from the fall of UsefulNotes/TheRomanEmpire to the dawn of the UsefulNotes/TheRenaissance, so it covers a fair bit of time (1000 years, from the 5th to the 15th centuries, to be rough) which was split into multiple time periods (see TheMiddleAges for more information). As a result not all of the information given will apply to the entire timespan, and writers who want to be historically accurate should do additional research to be certain of what food would have been eaten at a specific point.

For fictionalised versions of Medieval meals, see StockMedievalMeal.

Brandy and whiskey were known in Medieval times (along with other spirits, but specific names for ''them'' didn't show up until the Renaissance), but would mostly have been treated as medicines rather than drinks. Distillation was relatively new technology, being introduced from the Islamic world around the 12th century (possibly by returning [[UsefulNotes/TheCrusades Crusaders]] or by merchants following them), and the Muslims largely used the technique to make medicines, perfumes, and cosmetics, and to perform alchemical experiments.[[note]]It's not clear exactly when and where the concept of distillation was developed, but it can be generally connected to late antiquity or the early Middle Ages in the Eastern Mediterranean. It was originally used to make beauty products: the Eastern cosmetics industry developed a technique for heating a certain antimony-containing mineral in a closed container so it would sublimate and deposit a fine powder, called kohl (meaning "blue," because of its blue-black color), on the interior walls of the container. The kohl was then gathered and used as an eyeliner. They later figured out that if you did the same thing to water with fragrant materials (like rose petals or lavender) mixed in, but connected the heated container to a cool one with a pipe, you could collect the essential oils that made up the fragrance (the heat would cause the oils to vaporize separately from the water, and they would collect in a layer floating on top of the distilled water in the cool container; the water in the cool container would be slightly perfumed and would often be used in cooking). The process was later adapted to still other beauty products. Alcohol-containing liquids were not distilled until the Islamic period, and while the Muslim nobility was always rather lax in their observation on their faith's proscription against intoxicants, consensus is that the Muslim alchemists working on alcohol really were mostly interested in alcohol's potential applications as a carrier for perfumes and "medicinal" herbs and spices--a job it actually does do rather well, since ethanol is a medium-polarity solvent, which allows it to dissolve non-polar compounds, but also means it is itself miscible in water. That being said, the powerful intoxicating effect of the "medicinal" solutions was quickly noted; probably the oldest distilled beverage is the anise-based drink that goes by ''`araq'' in the Arab world, ''raki'' in Turkey, and either ''ouzo'' or ''rakki'' in Greece, which is most likely a descendant of these Medieval medicinal tinctures. (It's also ancestral to Italian grappa--which ditches the anise--and sambuca--which keeps the anise and adds sugar and elderflower--and to French ''pastis'' and absinthe--both of which add more European herbs on top of the anise.) (Also of note, distillation of alcohol has been discovered independently in multiple places, most particularly East Asia, but the arrival of distillation in Europe can be firmly traced to trade links to the Middle East.[[/note]] For most of the period, spirits would have been clear: The concept of aging spirits (and wines) in barrels was discovered still later as barrel technology improved through the Middle Ages, leading them to replace ceramic vessels as the primary means of transporting liquid commodities. The flavor they imparted was discovered by accident as a result of long trade journeys.

Other common modern foodstuffs not available in Medieval Europe are "common" beans of the genus ''Phaseolus'' (as mentioned in "Legumes" above), chili peppers, vanilla, cacao/chocolate, bananas[[note]]These ''are'' Old World, originating in Southeast Asia, and were known in the Middle East in the Middle Ages. Using the very broadest definitions of both "Medieval" and "Europe", bananas were technically known in Medieval Europe, as the Kingdom of Cyprus is recorded to have started banana cultivation around 1458. However, even then, they were mainly confined to there, as recorded by Italian traveler Gabriele Capodilista.[[/note]], pineapples [[note]]Pineapples were mentioned as early as 1493 when Christopher Columbus brought them back from the New World; it wasn't until well into the 1700s that they were grown in Europe. The first confirmed use of the word "pineapple" was by the English in 1714. Famously, rich Early Modern Europeans ''rented'' pineapples just to display them in their homes as a sign of wealth; to actually ''eat'' a precious pineapple was an extravagance rarely seen before [[TheGildedAge the back half of the 19th century]].[[/note]], blueberries,[[note]]Though the similar bilberries would have been available and might be called blueberries; the word for the bilberry in Old Norse and its descendants (Danish, Swedish, Norwegian, Faeroese, and Icelandic) translates to "blue berry".[[/note]] and cranberries.[[note]]Though a species of cranberry is native to Britain, it doesn’t seem to have been used much if at all in the Middle Ages. The similar lingonberries may have been used in the Nordic countries, but obviously those have a different name (and are largely restricted to Northern Europe).[[/note]]
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Pigs and chickens were more commonly eaten by the lower classes, as both animals could be easily and cheaply fed. They were common in both the country and the city, as these animals are relatively easy to raise in an urban environment. Pigs in particular were able to sustain themselves on basically anything people fed them; indeed, pigs often formed an important part of a city's sanitation system by eating refuse.[[note]]Pig-based urban trash disposal is a very old custom and survived for a very long time. In the Middle Ages, refuse-eating pigs are documented, at a minimum, in London. In the post-medieval period, trash-eating pigs wandered the streets of New York City well into the 19th century; it's reported that there was an outcry in all parts of Manhattan when the city tried to end the program. Even later, the ''Zabbalīn'' (Christian trash collectors/rag-and-bone men) of Cairo are documented to have fed collected food waste to pigs until an ill-advised government-ordered pig cull amidst the [=H1N1=] "swine flu" pandemic of 2009.[[/note]] In rural areas, meanwhile, peasants were often allowed to lead their pigs into the forests, where the animals would eat up all kinds of otherwise useless forest-floor waste like acorns and roots. The pigs turned all this feed into flesh very efficiently; even a small pig can easily produce over 50 kilograms of edible meat and fat, and larger ones can produce as much as 150 or more. Pork also had the advantage of being easy to preserve as bacon, ham, and sausage. Pork was therefore relatively abundant, and so when times were at least fairly good, all but the poorest would have access to some kind of preserved pork product for consumption on a regular basis--perhaps not daily, but fairly frequently nonetheless.\\

For all the presence of fermented dairy, yogurt was interesting in its absence. Largely unknown in medieval Europe, yogurt was mostly a Middle Eastern and Central Asian thing.[[note]]The ancient Greeks may have known yogurt as ''oxygala'', but there's no record of it past late Classical Antiquity. The popularity of yogurt in Greece and the Balkans today, and in Russia up to the 19th century, appears to be the result of Turkish influence (or possibly Tatar influence in the case of Russia), starting no earlier than the 15th century.[[/note]] (The very word ''yogurt'' is originally Turkish.) The major exceptions are Ireland and the Nordic countries. It's likely that the cattle-rearing Irish had some form of yogurt, due to the mentions of "sour" or "thick" milk from outsiders. Similarly, modern Icelandic skyr, Swedish filmjölk, and Norwegian (and to a lesser extent Danish) surmelk probably all derive from a common [[UsefulNotes/TheVikingAge Viking Age]] yogurt-type product. Given that a good part of the Viking Age involved Norse people raiding/attacking/colonising Ireland, one rather wonders who got yogurt from whom....\\

In most of Medieval Europe, cheese was seen as something to be eaten in place of meat when meat was scarce. However, in some areas, such as Ireland, it was seen as an equal to meat, and would frequently be consumed by the noble classes as well as the peasantry. All that said, cheese was often found on noble tables across Europe in two major forms: (1) in elaborate preparations involving more expensive ingredients (e.g. spices, sugar, expensive fruits, or meat)[[note]]For instance, sugar-sweetened and spiced cheesecakes/cheese pies, sometimes with fruit, appear to have been staples of noble banquets, as do savory pies (spiced again, possibly with meat) that amount to medieval quiches. There's also a weird late Medieval Italian recipe for ravioli stuffed with ricotta, parmesan, sugar, spices, and pretty much every meat you can think of.[[/note]] and (2) on its own as a simple private snack.[[note]]We have less direct evidence of this, but most historians agree that nobles' simpler meals simply weren't recorded because they weren't seen as significant. This is a pattern common across cultures and history, starting with [[UsefulNotes/AncientEgyptianHistory the Ancient Egyptians]]: Royals and nobles like to portray themselves enjoying sumptuous banquets of the most expensive delicacies all the time, but when one does the math, there's no way that the economy could support such constant feasting at most times and places. (There are some exceptions, typically among the elites of the capitals/main cities of great empires like Thebes and Memphis in New Kingdom Egypt, the various capitals of Achaemenid Persia, Late Republican/Imperial Rome, Abbasid Baghdad, Umayyad Córdoba, Mongol/Chinese Yuan Dynasty Beijing, Aztec Tenochtitlan, etc., etc., but only when the empire was at its most decadent height.)[[/note]] It also appears to have been used as field rations for military men of all classes when on campaign (since it could withstand the rigors of war, an army might not be in a position to raid and "live off the land", and a nobleman on active campaign might not have time to hunt).[[note]]Cheese as a war ration has a long history in Europe; cheese and onions were the field rations of the Athenian hoplites in UsefulNotes/ThePeloponnesianWar (as related by Creator/{{Aristophanes}}, whose chorus in ''Peace'' sings ''Oh joy, joy! No more helmet, no more cheese nor onions!'' on the arrival of peace).[[/note]]\\

The exact grains grown in an area would depend on the climate. If there was any way to grow wheat, though, there would be at least a small patch as a cash crop. Pure wheat bread was normally only eaten by the upper classes (or at least the rich). The highest grades of wheat bread were made with flour that had its bran sifted out, resulting in a white bread. Lower grades contained the bran, which made a darker loaf. (This accidentally served the nutritional interests of the lower classes, since the bran contains vital micronutrients like B vitamins; nobles got none of this from their white bread, but this was compensated by their higher intake of fruits and meats.)\\

Wherever they were situated and whatever their ownership, Medieval ovens were of a relatively simple design. Generally taking the form of an earth and/or masonry dome or box with an entryway, a wood fire would be started in the interior, allowed to burn down to coals, then the coals would be raked to the sides and food cooked in the middle. As a result, the bottom portion of a loaf of bread would be nearly inedible and used as a "trencher" (effectively a semi-edible plate or bowl).[[note]]This is where we get the term "trencherman" for someone who likes to eat.[[/note]] Pies during this time used a very strong crust known as "huff paste," a kind of hypertrophic hot-water crust made of very strong flours mixed with fat and water, and also nearly inedible in and of itself. \\

What few spices that could be grown in Europe were also popular. Most common were spices from the seeds of plants in the carrot family, widely grown in Europe. Caraway (which grows well as far north as Sweden and Finland) was used for breads and sweets, while the seeds of herbs and vegetables like fennel, lovage, coriander, and celery were commonly used in sausages and pickling brines.[[note]]Caraway made an occasional appearance in these as well, but use of caraway for savory foods mostly disappeared after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. (Ancient Roman cuisine liked to use caraway in certain savory dishes, especially with chicken, and especially in combination with sylphium or asafoetida/hing. However, medieval cookery generally keeps caraway for sweets.)[[/note]] Cumin and anise also found use in the parts of Southern Europe where they could grow; cumin was particularly popular in Iberia under Arab influence. (And now you know where the cuisines of Latin America get their famous affinity for cumin.) Coriander was also used to flavor alcoholic beverages, both in the form of beer (the Belgian tradition of including coriander in wheat beer probably dates from the late Middle Ages) and distilled spirits (gin, which usually includes coriander as a supporting note for the dominant juniper, also dates from the late Medieval period)\\

What few spices that could be grown in Europe were also popular. Most common were spices from the seeds of plants in the carrot family, widely grown in Europe. Caraway (which grows well as far north as Sweden and Finland) was used for breads and sweets, while the seeds of herbs and vegetables like fennel, lovage, coriander, and celery were commonly used in sausages and pickling brines.[[note]]Caraway made an occasional appearance in these as well, but use of caraway for savory foods mostly disappeared after the collapse of the Western Roman Empire. (Ancient Roman cuisine liked to use caraway in certain savory dishes, especially with chicken, and especially in combination with sylphium or asafoetida/hing. However, medieval cookery generally keeps caraway for sweets.)[[/note]] Cumin and anise also found use in the parts of Southern Europe where they could grow. Coriander was also used to flavor alcoholic beverages, both in the form of beer (the Belgian tradition of including coriander in wheat beer probably dates from the late Middle Ages) and distilled spirits (gin, which usually includes coriander as a supporting note for the dominant juniper, also dates from the late Medieval period)\\

Another exception was grape wine, at least in the grape-growing regions of Europe. France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and the Balkans were (then as now) major grape producers, so wine was a staple of the diet--a legacy of the ancient Roman position that wine was so fundamental, no one, not even a slave, should be made to do without it.[[note]]Seriously, the Romans considered it slave abuse to deny your slave wine except as punishment. Whether this led to anything more than tut-tutting from Roman guardians of morality is unclear, but this was the social opinion.[[/note]] Wine was also common in parts of Central Europe (e.g. the Rhineland, Hungary, and Lower Austria--all major wine regions to this day) that had a good climate for grapes. During the Medieval Warm Period (up until the start of the Little Ice Age in about the 12th century), there was even winemaking in the South of England; there is even some suggestion (though no clear evidence) of limited viticulture (mostly for sacramental purposes) in 10th- through 12th-century Sweden. However, outside of the wine-growing regions (including England after the start of the Little Ice Age), wine was an imported luxury reserved for the wealthy. In more northerly parts, even the sacramental wine of the Eucharist was usually reserved to a single sip for the priest, in large part because it was so scarce; the rest of the congregation just got the bread. (Whether the laity should be allowed to have the wine at Mass therefore became an issue in UsefulNotes/TheProtestantReformation, but that's outside our scope.)\\

Another exception was grape wine, at least in the grape-growing regions of Europe. France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Greece, and the Balkans were (then as now) major grape producers, so wine was a staple of the diet--a legacy of the ancient Roman position that wine was so fundamental, no one, not even a slave, should be made to do without it.[[note]]Seriously, the Romans considered it slave abuse to deny your slave wine except as punishment. Whether this led to anything more than tut-tutting from Roman guardians of morality is unclear, but this was the social opinion.[[/note]] Wine was also common in parts of Central Europe (e.g. the Rhineland, Hungary, and Lower Austria--all major wine regions to this day) that had a good climate for grapes. During the Medieval Warm Period (up until the start of the Little Ice Age in about the 12th century), there was even winemaking in the South of England; there is even some suggestion (though no clear evidence) of limited viticulture (mostly for sacramental purposes) in 10th- through 12th-century Sweden. However, outside of the wine-growing regions (including England after the start of the Little Ice Age), wine was an imported luxury reserved for the wealthy. In more northerly parts, even the sacramental wine of the Eucharist was usually reserved to a single sip for the priest, in large part because it was so scarce; the rest of the congregation just got the bread. (Whether the laity should be allowed to have the wine at Mass therefore became an issue in the Protestant Reformation, but that's outside our scope.)\\